All I've Got Left
by Jaela-chan
Summary: Andrew and Jonathan flee to Mexico to escape an evil witch bent on murdering them. They reminisce about their pasts and find equal parts annoyance and comfort in one another. Spoilers for Two to Go. Slight implied slash.


"Jonathan." Andrew twisted his fingers together nervously. "You weren't... you weren't _jealous_, were you?"

Jonathan raised his eyebrows, still staring straight ahead at the road as he drove. "Jealous?"

"Of us. I mean... Warren. And me."

Jonathan allowed himself a quick sideways look at Andrew. He was dead serious. "Jealous?" he repeated. "There was nothing to be jealous _of._"

"He told me he loved me," Andrew protested.

"I'm not... _queer_, if that's what you're getting at."

Andrew squirmed. "No, that's not what I..."

"Oh! Oh, no offense. Or anything. I just--"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Andrew's voice rose up through the octaves as if he'd just taken in a gulp of helium. He forced a laugh. "Why would I be offended?"

Johnathan sighed. "Cut the crap, Andrew. I know. I've known for a long time, okay?" He hunkered down so that he could hardly see over the steering wheel, and stared even harder at the road ahead. "And I'm okay with it. So just..."

Andrew stared wide-eyed at his companion. "For a long time?" he squeaked out.

"Yeah, I... I pay attention, okay? So let's just... can we not talk about this anymore? About Warren?" he cleared his throat and sat up, resettling himself in his seat.

"It doesn't have to be about Warren," Andrew mumbled. "But I've never told anyone. About me... I've never had anyone to talk to." What did Andrew usually do with his hands? He couldn't remember. They seemed cumbersome and awkward appendages to have.

Jonathan didn't say anything, so Andrew took that as a cue that he could go on.

"I think I've always known," he said slowly. "Since I was a little kid. Girls never... well, I liked the _idea_ of girls. But not when I got to thinking about... doing things." he shuddered. "I pretended a lot. I pretended for Warr--" he shook his head quickly. "Oops."

Jonathan coughed. "I'm not really the right person to be talking to about this, Andrew," he said. "I'm not good at... comforting people. Stuff like that, it's all--"

"You're the only one I _can_ talk to, okay?" Andrew's voice was pathetic and pleading. "No one else knows. And I don't have anyone else to tell." He drew a ragged breath that sounded dangerously close to tears. "You're supposed to be my friend."

"I _am_ your friend," Jonathan said forcefully. "Don't ever question that. Okay? I am, I am."

That subdued Andrew.

"It's just that I'm not good at comforting people. I can't even comfort myself. I almost--" Jonathan couldn't bring himself to say it. "Well, there was that time."

"When you almost..."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

Andrew stretched an arm across the space between them and rubbed Jonathan's shoulder. Yes, he remembered. Jonathan's grand plan to make Sunnydale High, the site of years of torment for him, his final resting place. He had intended to wait until everyone was gone from the quad. And then a shot would ring out, and they'd all come rushing out again--rushing out for _him_. Jonathan had chosen the gun specifically to make a bold mess of things, so that when he was discovered, the bloodied belltower would be enough of a spectacle to stick in the minds of his classmates(who had seen their share of the abnormal already). Everyone would hear about it. Some, Jonathan had reasoned, would be traumatized. He would add to the school's body count, but he would be different. He would be one who didn't die by suspicious, inexplicable means. The great divergence from the norm.

Andrew tried to imagine how he himself would have reacted. He'd known Jonathan then, but in sort of a distant way. They'd drifted separately through their high school lives. But probably, Andrew would still have been devastated. Jonathan was so much like him-- constantly under the radar, except for when he was being ridiculed and scorned for being different. His death would have hit way too close to home. Especially because...

"I thought about doing it before, too, you know," Andrew said. It was then that he realized he still had a hand on Jonathan's shoulder. Blushing, he withdrew it.

"What, offing yourself?" The way Jonathan said it was cold and severe.

"Well, yeah." Weak and wavering words. Andrew already wanted to take it all back. This was a little too much share time for one day.

Jonathan gave Andrew a quick look up and down before returning his eyes to the windshield and beyond. "You never would have gone through with it."

"I know. I'm too much of a coward."

"Shut up. A coward's the one who tries to take the easy way out. The brave thing is to stick around and fight."

Andrew's heart rose right up into his throat at that, and he blinked back tears. No one had ever said anything like that to him before. He considered a million ways to thank Jonathan, but none of them seemed right. So instead, he changed the subject.

"How far is Mexico, anyway? I mean, how many hours of driving are we talking?"

"It's not very far."

"Yeah, but how far is not v--"

"There's a map in the glove compartment, okay?" Jonathan raised his voice exasperatedly. "I don't really want to talk right now. So if you're bored, why don't you navigate?"

Andrew obediently popped open the glove compartment and fished out an atlas, spreading it across his lap and he snuck furtive glances at Jonathan, trying to gauge whether or not he was angry. His jaw was clenched and his shoulders high and tense, but it was hard to tell. He could just be anxious. Sighing internally, Andrew set about trying to locate the highway they were following on the map.

It wasn't long before he'd traced every possible route and exhausted all the anagrams of names of cities they would pass through, and he grew bored.

"Jonathan, how long are we going to stay in Mexico?"

"Andrew. Unless you're telling me which exit to take next, can you please be quiet?"

"That's not fair," he protested. "This is so boring. And the silence is making me nervous.

"Your constant _blabbering_ makes _me_ nervous," Jonathan countered.

"Ouch." Well, that wasn't a very nice thing to say. "Look, I know you're uptight about this whole thing, but you don't have to take it all out on me. And think about it-- we're on the run! Isn't that, like, kind of cool, actually? It's even a little bit..." Andrew hedged. "...Like a movie," he finished. He did not say the first thing that had come to his mind, which had been "_sexy_".

"You know what pisses me off, Andrew?" Jonathan finally said, his voice strained and acidic.

He sounded so much like Warren that Andrew jumped in his seat. "Wh... what?"

"One second, you're all torn up that Warren's dead, and you're talking about how the two of you had something special and I was... nothing. Insignificant. And the next, you want _us_ to be bestest buddies. What gives?!" Jonathan's voice rose to a shout. "You always went on about how close you two were, how devoted you were to him, but when it comes down to it, you never gave a crap about Warren."

"That is _not_ true!" Andrew shot Jonathan the dirtiest stare he could manage, Oh, if looks could kill...

"Not _Warren_ specifically," Jonathan shot right back. "It could have been anyone! What you want, Andrew, is someone to cling to. It doesn't matter who it is."

"You're wrong," Andrew protested. But his face dropped the death glare and his chest deflated. "I cared about Warren, I-- ..I lov--"

"Don't say that," Jonathan interrupted. "It's pathetic."

"Well, it's true."

"It's not."

"It _is_. But you..." Andrew struggled with how to voice this part. Every way of wording it seemed awkward. Wrong. "But you're my friend, too," he finally settled with, even though that wasn't really what he was trying to say. "That stuff I said before, about you-- in jail, I mean... that was just..." he sighed. "That was just talk. I was upset."

Jonathan only let out a sharp breath from his nose in response. Not quite a snort, not quite a laugh. Not much of anything, really.

"I'm sorry," Andrew added.

"If I died tomorrow," Jonathan said at length, "would you already be buddying up to someone else by Tuesday?"

Andrew frowned. He started to say something, then bit his lip. Took a deep breath, then tried again. "I don't... I don't _have_ anyone else, okay? You're all I've got left."

"Yeah, well, me too."

It took no further prompting from Jonathan for the rest of the trip to pass in almost complete silence. The only breaks in the mutually tacit state were for Andrew pointing out an exit, or mumbling how many miles to follow such-and-such highway.

Their eyes spoke, though. Eyes contemplating. Fleeting looks speaking profusions of sentiment about their mutual duty: _You are the only person I have in the whole world now._

Well, Jonathan had been alone for a long time. There had been friends in elementary school-- not close friends, but friends. But that didn't last. Kids can be cruel. Once they learned to see his nasal voice and short stature as something different, something wrong, the laughter and the teasing began. And once that became boring, they just ignored him instead.

And once junior high hit, no one even bothered to give him a chance anymore. Judgements from then on were made as swiftly as a first glance. In high school, it didn't even take that-- no one was worth anything unless someone else said so. It got worse. No real friends, and not so much as a secret admirer in the romance department. Nothing except for someone occasionally stepping in to tell his tormentors to back off when things got too serious. And Buffy stepping in to save his life in the belltower.

Which is why he had turned to the spell.

There were two main elements to it. The first was revenge. All those people who had ignored him for so long would pay attention to him now in equal measure. The other was that so many doors would be open for Jonathan that had henceforth been firmly bolt-locked shut. For one thing, he'd be able to get laid. That was a big plus.

Andrew, in slight contrast, had had friends every now and then. In passing. Mostly girls-- girls who thought his childish ways were cute. Girls who would move on and forget him when he got to be too much of a downer. Andrew _had_ been a pretty depressing person to be around back then, to be fair. But it still seemed cold that every one of them drifted away at one point or another. And also that those he wished he could garner some attention from seemed always to turn a blind eye. Cool guys. Some tall, some with dark hair. Good-looking ones. Always older-- that was the one thing that was never a variable. Always older guys that he set his sights on, and that never gave him a passing glance in return.

It hadn't always been Warren. He tried to remember when exactly that started, but every time he thought back on it, it seemed that it inched back to a different place on the timeline. He would remember something from before the last thing he'd decided had been the beginning of it-- an earlier incident when he'd Noticed Warren. When Andrew had Noticed him and felt his heart skip a beat. But he did know that there was a time Before Warren. Because before Warren was even on Andrew's radar, there was Scott.

Scott was older and dark-haired. He wasn't tall, but his personality made up for it. Oh, Scott was so cool and so sensitive-- and so utterly unaware that Andrew even existed. In a way, that just made him more appealing-- it meant Andrew would just have to work harder to become friends with him.

But it never happened. Andrew watched Scott watch others. It seemed like Scott was watching some of the same guys that Andrew himself was, actually... but then, out of the blue, Scott asked out Buffy Summers. Swooped in on her like a vulture stalking its prey, and took Andrew completely off-guard. Well, sure, she was cool, Buffy. She was plenty cool, and pretty and all that. Hot, even.

But he didn't get it.

It must have been not too long after Scott and Buffy happened that Andrew took Notice of Warren. Because by the time Scott and Buffy split, after a pretty short relationship, it didn't matter to Andrew anymore. Scott could do whatever he wanted.

A shame, too, because part of the reason Scott split with Buffy was because he had Noticed Andrew. Noticed how bright and full of life he was.

No one ever had before.

And Andrew never knew. Because he'd practically forgotten Scott existed. And any lingering memory or longing he might have had was obliterated when he heard those words...

"I love you," said Warren, and the ripples of those words drifted infinitely out from the source, hitting every corner of Andrew and then bouncing back, running to the center again.

"We're here," Jonathan said. It seemed so abrupt.

Andrew moaned. "Whaaaat." he drew out the word. "Come 'n... come and get me after you check in," he whined. He realized he'd drifted off. "Lemme sleep s'more."

"We're already checked in. I let you sleep as long as I could."

There was something weird in Jonathan's voice. What was that?

"I dunwanna giddup." More whining.

"Don't be a wimp, Andrew. You can't just sleep in the van." He leaned in over the seat. "It's not safe. You know that."

"S'no safer inside," Andrew said, but he pressed the release on his seatbelt and pushed himself up all the same. "Mexico. If she finds us here, shouldn't make much difference. Car or hotel or whatever,"

"She's not gonna find us. But you shouldn't be sleeping in cars in strange countries, okay?"

That was kind of like concern. Andrew was pretty sure he liked that. "Sure, okay." He rubbed at his eyes. "You really think she won't be able to find us? Willow?"

Jonathan wasn't sure, but for the sake of Andrew, he could be. "She probably won't come after us. And we have enough of a head start to lose her if she does," he said as they walked through the door. "Don't worry about Willow."

"Okay. No worrying," Andrew agreed over a rather large yawn. "She won't find us here." Another yawn. "No.. Willow... worry. No worrying about Willow. Willow worry..."

"Okay, shut up."

"Shutting up."

Inside, it was uncomfortably warm. Andrew sprawled out on the bed lazily, hardly having enough room for long, gangly limbs. "I'm gonna die."

"No you're not, idiot. Get up and make room."

"Make huh?" Andrew bolted into a sitting position and gave a startled look around the room. "Oh... oh!" Blood rose quickly in his face. "There's just the one bed."

"Just the one," Jonathan confirmed, disgruntled. "If you'd forked over some more cash, maybe we could have afforded a nicer room. Two beds."

The way Andrew sat with his legs drawn up and his lips pouting made him look uncannily puppy-like. "I don't have very much. And I had to save some for souvenirs."

Jonathan gave Andrew a dangerous look. "_Souvenirs?!_"

More pouting from Andrew. "I've never been to Mexico before! Someday, you're going to want something to look back and remember this trip by, and you're going to be sorry if you don't have a... a mini sombrero or something."

"_Mini sombrero_." Jonathan's voice kept the same bitter edge.

"Or something!"

"Andrew, I am not going to look back and want to remember this trip. I'm not going to want to be reminded of how I had to run for my life or be de-skin-ified by an evil witch. That's something I'm going to want to forget about. And I _definitely_ am not going to have any use for a _mini sombrero_."

"Or _something_, I said," Andrew exclaimed, throwing his arms up in exasperation. "God, do you not listen at all?" He flopped over on his side, curling up and hugging a pillow to him tightly.

After a few moments of silence, they both calmed down a little.

"Let's not fight, okay?" Andrew said. "We're in this together. Aren't we?"

"Yeah." Jonathan sat down on the opposite edge of the bed.

More silence.

"This isn't gonna weird you out or anything, is it."

"What?"

"Sharing a bed. Because you know. Y'know. About me."

Jonathan sighed. "It's only awkward if we make it awkward. Like I said, I'm okay with it."

"Good."

"..."

And yet more silence.

Jonathan laid down, keeping as far to his side of the bed as possible in spite of his assertion that this would not be a problem.

"Jonathan."

"Yeah." His voice had an irritated edge-- couldn't this guy _ever_ just shut up? They should be getting some sleep.

"Say that thing to me again. About how you're my friend?"

Psh. Pathetic. "I'm your friend. That's... really all the more there was to that."

"Mmmmh." Andrew rolled over so that he was facing Jonathan's back. "And tell me again about how, what was it? I'm the only one _you've_ got left, too?"

"You're gonna make this awkward."

"Yeah, I think it's gonna be awkward," Andrew agreed. "Sorry." He placed a hand against the small of Jonathan's back.

"What are you doing?"

That was a good question, Andrew thought. "Comforting."

"Comforting."

"You made me feel better. I want to help you, too."

Jonathan turned over and stared hard into Andrew's eyes. "You know what would make me feel a lot better?"

"What? Anything."

"Stop talking, close your eyes, and get some rest."

"But--"

"You said you like taking orders. So I'm ordering you to go to sleep."

Andrew stopped talking. But now the room was quiet and still, and Andrew and Jonathan were lying on the bed facing each other. And the hand that had rested on Jonathan's back, in the process of his turning over, had now come to rest on his hip.

Neither dared to speak. And neither dared to move.

The Imperial Death March played.

"Cellphone?" Jonathan guessed.

"Cellphone," Andrew admitted.

He sat back up again and pulled the little silver phone out of his pocket, flicking it open with a swift and practiced motion. "Hello?" Andrew furrowed his brow and tiled his head to the side. "Uh, hello? Hello?" He sighed. "No one there." Flipped it shut. "Wrong number, probably." Back into the pocket. "No one ever calls me."

"Shouldn't carry the phone in your front pocket like that," Jonathan muttered.

"Why not?"

"Radio waves. Decreases your sperm count."

"Really?" Andrew contemplated that for a moment, wide-eyed, as he laid back down. Then he gave a kind of half-shrug. "Well, whatever." The phone stayed in the front pocket.

"Oh, right. I guess it doesn't really matter to you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, it's not like you're planning on using them for anything."

"What?" Andrew's ears burned. "Shut up. Can we... let's just stop talking about my sperm, okay?"

"More than happy to."

"But you're the one who brought it up."

"Just forget it, okay?" Jonathan's eyes flashed in warning.

Jonathan had nice eyes, Andrew thought. Nice eyes, and dark hair.

He was short though. Like Scott. Shorter than Scott.

He didn't look so short lying down.

_...Bad Andrew. Bad. Don't let your mind go there_, he thought.

Geez, did he ever miss Warren. It was so quiet in this room. So quiet and still again. And silence really did make Andrew nervous-- it always had.

"Why can't Willow just magic herself here if she decides to kill us right away?"

"I told you not to worry."

"I can't help it. She could pop in any minute, and we'd both be dead."

It was a good point, but Jonathan wasn't going to admit it. Not for the world. "Are you afraid to die?"

"Well, duh." What kind of question was that, anyway?

"I'm not."

Well, that just seemed plain absurd. "Liar. Everyone is afraid of dying."

"Well, I'm not. I haven't been for a long time. Do we need to talk about the gun and the belltower again?"

In response, Andrew just shut off the lights. No, no more talking. Not about Jonathan with a gun to his head, or Willow appearing in the room by magics to flay them, or anything.

But in the dark, the silence was even more tense.

In the dark, Jonathan could be anyone. He could be Warren, or Colin Firth, or whoever.

In the dark, Andrew could easily be one of the Swedish twins. To an extent, at least.

And so, in the dark, Andrew made up the distance between them.


End file.
